Sir Alex Ferguson will be little more than a jealous onlooker at the Champions League final in Gelsenkirchen on May 26 and presumably he will rather shut himself away in a darkened room than follow the progress of Chelsea and Arsenal in a competition which continues to cause him such anguish.

For a club of United's bloated resources and loaded ambitions not to reach the quarter-finals for the first time in eight seasons can be described only as utter failure and Ferguson will face questions, legitimate or not, about the amount of culpability he should accept.

Had his legal dispute with John Magnier had an adverse effect on the team? Did he blunder by selling David Beckham last summer?

Ferguson has grown wearily accustomed to end-of-empire obituaries but, even though the FA Cup may yet be returned to Old Trafford, he has cause to regard this as his most troubled season since there were banners in the Stretford End demanding his removal from office in December 1989.

True, there are mitigating circumstances, not least the trigger-happy linesman who denied Paul Scholes a perfectly good goal at the end of the first half.

But that will be forgotten eventually as the evidence is scraped together for the post-mortem. United, quite simply, have taken a step backwards, if not two, and Ferguson may have to reinvent them if they are to win the Euro- pean Cup again under his management.

Not that he was in any mood to dissect their deficiencies in public. His immediate reaction, as always, was to protect his players from criticism, praising them for their endeavour and refusing to tolerate suggestions that he has not recruited the personnel worthy of competing with the very best.

"You get shocks in life and I couldn't see that one coming," he volunteered before going into a typically robust speech. "We've had a terrible blow but there's nothing to be ashamed of. Worry shouldn't come into it unless you are an abject failure.

"Our season isn't over. We won't give up in the league because there's no reason to and we've still got an FA Cup semi-final to look forward to. We've had our disappoint ments before but it's how you react in adversity that counts."

Ferguson's anger was directed more towards the officials. "The referee and the linesman didn't do their job," he said of Scholes's disallowed goal. "I couldn't believe it. Sometimes you get a situation when there is one defender playing you onside and it is hard to spot but in this case there were three."

Other subjects, such as why he failed to buy a replacement for Rio Ferdinand in the January transfer window or why he dithered so long before appointing a successor to Carlos Queiroz, as his assistant, he did not want to elaborate upon.

Yet what really rankles with Ferguson is the accusation that he should never have sold Beckham.

A variation of the charge is probably closer to the truth because Ferguson was entitled to offload a player with whom his relationship had become so vitriolic that the acrimony polluted the entire dressing-room. Where he erred, perhaps, was by not replacing him satisfactorily. It says much, for example, that, despite the warm embrace Ferguson reserved for Cristiano Ronaldo at the end of Saturday's FA Cup tie against Fulham, the most expensive teenager in British football did not merit a starting place.

Ronaldo has decorated matches rather than dominated them and Ferguson must wince when he considers the transfer targets who have eluded him.

Ronaldinho is more valuable than Ronaldo in football as well as Scrabble whereas Ferguson could be excused for wondering whether there would be so many misgivings about his team had he successfully lured Patrick Vieira or Pavel Nedved to Old Trafford.

Only two of this season's six recruits were in his initial XI and one of those, Eric Djemba-Djemba, had not started a match since November 1. The Cameroonian was as effective as anyone before suffering a broken rib. Yet it is unfair to bill him as the next Roy Keane, if there ever could be such a thing. If Djemba-Djemba is the new Keane, Roy Carroll must be the new Peter Schmeichel.

The real Keane could be located in the South Stand, his most impenetrable stare a neon warning for autograph hunters to think twice.

He had plenty to occupy him, too. Yet, by the time of Costinha's late and decisive contribution, the news that Uefa may add another two games to his one-match ban for stamping on the Porto goalkeeper Vitor Baia had paled into insignificance.